Stunning First Images and Video from the RED Epic Dragon

Director and cinematographer Mark Toia at the RED User Forum has his hands on the new 6K RED Epic Dragon, and he calls it “the real deal,” writing, “It’s the first camera ever that I have used that captures exactly what I see with my own eye. Never have I seen this before!”

From Toia’s post:

The Red Dragon sensor has 3 F STOPS more than before. 1 in the hight lights which rolls over wonderfully !, 2 solid extra stops in the darks…. maybe 3 once the colour science has been perfected. But there is still noise, but nothing like before. I ran some 250d 2k film rushes next some of my 4000asa stuff, And silly as it sounds, it looks like film grain, not noise. Don’t ask me how, as I wouldn’t have a clue. But it looks great!

Red Dragon now has the best highlight fall off I have ever seen from any digital camera. Beating film! Big call I know, but after shooting film and pushing it around in telecine chains for more than a decade, I can categorically say that this new sensor has a better range than film ever had.

Single still frames compared to a top of the line professional 35mm Digital stills cameras, I’m going to say that the EPIC matches, if not betters most. Don’t ask me how they do it, but every single frame from the DRAGON is 109meg !! @16bit when saved as a tiff from RCX. and at 100 Frames per second, I tell you this… someone has sold there soul to the devil.

Darius Wolski, Peter Jackson, Michael Bay and others have the camera as well and are, reportedly, testing it for use in future projects.

On his post, Toia has posted images from the camera, such as the one above, as well as a test video. Check it out below.